Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [113]
And didn’t.
It became apparent quickly that I wasn’t going to bring them out through the front. The heat was so bad my wrists were burning where the gauntlets on my gloves were pushed up into my sleeves, the back of my neck feeling like the worst sunburn of my life. I tried to get lower, slithering along on my stomach for another few feet. I was breathing cool air from the compressed air cylinder on my back, but the room was as hot as anything I’d ever endured.
I backed out just as the hose stream hit the ceiling above me and a great billow of steam descended all around, burning my cheeks around the edges of my face mask, scalding me so badly I wanted to scream.
Just before I cleared the front door, something opaque came down across my vision and slapped my facepiece so I could see only out of my left eye. I wondered for half a second if my face was burned. There was so much adrenaline pumping through my veins, I couldn’t tell.
When I got outside, the firefighters in the yard cut down the volume of water from their nozzle and arched a stream of water onto me. We could hear the sizzle of evaporating water on the plastic Cairns helmet, on the metal parts that held the shield up. Steam rose off my coat and backpack.
As they cooled me off, one of the tires on my pickup truck exploded with a dull pop. A male bystander scampered over to it, opened the door with a T-shirt wrapped around his hand, released the brake, and tried to push the vehicle to safety. Two other men ran over to help but found the sheet metal too hot to touch.
When I swiped at the object across my facepiece, I realized a piece of my helmet had melted onto my air mask. Only by taking my helmet off could I peel the melted plastic off.
“God, you’re burning up, man,” said the nozzleman. “I didn’t think you were going to come out.”
“Don’t shoot it into the rear,” I said. “I’m going in the back door.”
“It’s not going to work. It’s—”
Maybe they would be back there somewhere—my girls—hiding in one of the back rooms.
As I reached the still-intact window of the family room in back of the house, I could see flame rolling across the kitchen ceiling toward the back door.
I opened the door and was met by a dull roar of orange bursting out over my head. Stupid bastards. The firefighters in front were using their hose stream to push the flame and heat at me from the front. They hadn’t listened to me.
I dropped to my knees and crawled inside, flashlight in one hand.
Another burst from the hose line in front of the house pushed a gigantic ball of yellow-orange across the ceiling toward me. I flattened out on the floor for a moment, feeling the heat on the back of my neck and through my heavy protective Nomex clothing.
Knowing the pain had just begun, I inched forward into the inferno.
48. RICE, SOUP, AND KIDS IN THE CUPBOARDS
I moved along one wall sweeping my arms under furniture, under the futon, behind the chairs, anywhere a child might hide or an adult might fall. On hands and knees I made a quick and thorough circuit of the family room keeping my nose on the floor. Walking upright, I would have lasted all of ten seconds. Our bunkers were fire-resistant, not fireproof, and even on the floor I could feel the incredible heat.
As I crawled, I felt blisters forming at my wrists and on my ears, where the heat knifed under my bunkers. House fires didn’t often get this hot, especially with the building’s windows broken out and water being applied.
In the kitchen, I reached under the table and heard the familiar sound of chair legs scraping across linoleum when I bumped them, the sound I heard every night at dinner.
Remembering my daughters sometimes liked to conceal themselves under the sink, I opened every one of the lower cupboards. Britney often leaped out at me when I swung the cupboard door open to get cat food for Eustace.